


Chopping Onions

by ottermo



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Family, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, The unifying power of onions, death mention
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22635892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: He always asks that. It’s kind of become their thing.
Relationships: Anne Shirley & Gilbert Blythe, Anne Shirley/Gilbert Blythe
Comments: 47
Kudos: 215





	1. The First Cuttings

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably nonsense, but it’s born out of my frustration with Gilbert highkey not appearing to care that Anne’s been crying when he comes on his cufflink hunt, even though he notices it. Onions, Blythe, really? I didn’t hear Anne dismissing _you_ like that the other day... 
> 
> Umm, anyway. I decided to defend him from myself. 
> 
> I actually haven’t finished watching the season, so it could well be divergent past 3.06, but here we go.

It had begun even before Dellie was born – the Shirley-Cuthbert and Blythe-Lacroix households blurring comfortably at the edges. Matthew advised Gilbert and Bash on the running of the farm, and they lent hands when his and Jerry’s came short; Marilla and Mary shared recipes, as well as fond glances over Anne’s attempts to replicate them. Bash taught Anne to play Carrom; Matthew helped Mary start up her vegetable patch; and Gilbert consulted Marilla on the unfamiliar names found in his father’s old journals. Further, Mary and Marilla taught Bash to knit between them, while Matthew and Gilbert were partners in Anne’s riding instruction (not, as she would later insist, that she really needed it). 

They were one family in two homesteads – soon accustomed to passing in and out without knocking on each other’s front doors. Anne and Gilbert, friends now after an uneasy and slate-shattering beginning, were rivals only in the schoolroom – at home, they were family, in the easy way that would later roll off their tongues when describing it. 

And so when, not long after Mary had discovered she was expecting a baby, Gilbert came home to find Anne standing in his kitchen with tears pouring down her face, he was concerned, but not shocked – she belonged there, she just ought not to be crying.

“Anne,” he said, crossing to her at once, “Anne, what’s the matter?”

She blinked and wiped her face quickly – somehow this made it worse, as she squealed and pulled her hands away. If anything, her eyes were redder now than ever. Gilbert was stricken. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing!” she said, twirling round and scrambling for the sink. She ran her fingers under the tap and then scooped some water up to her eyes. “Nothing,” she said again, through a gasp at the cold water. “I was chopping onions!”

Gilbert looked down at the table, and felt a blush rise in his cheeks as red as the half-cut vegetables that lay there. “Oh,” he said, in the same soft tone as before, and then, “Oh,” with a much gruffer quality. “Of course.”

Anne was giggling. “Thank you for your concern.”

“Concern,” he repeated, wondering how much of a chance he had at denying it. “I was just...”

“‘Just’ nothing!” she crowed, “You were positively _gentle_.”

He resented her using the word as an insult. Apparently, he did not hide the resentment well.

“Don’t look like that! It was...nice,” said Anne, drying her hands on a rag and turning back to the table. “Just unwarranted. I’m making up a soup for Mary. It wasn’t easy to convince her to rest but I reminded her that I’ll never improve if she helps me every time, and besides, we want that baby plump and healthy!” She picked up a spare knife. “So. Are you man enough to weep with me?”

He smiled and took it. “Let’s find out.”

The discovery that - while his chopping technique could stand a little tuition - Gilbert was certainly man enough to let the onions draw water, came very quickly – and that was how Bash found them when he arrived at the house a few minutes later.

“What’s all this?” he said, grinning at them and not even trying to hide his amusement.

“Onions,” sniffed Gilbert.

“Oh, yes. Saddest of all the vegetables.” Bash picked up a nearby chunk and bit down on it. “I suppose we can’t all be immune.” He looked at them both laughing at him, faces still streaked. “That’s more like it.”

“I declare,” said Anne grandly, when all the onions had gone in the pot and she and Gilbert had dried their faces, “That there is no greater unity than in the chopping of onions.”

Gilbert smiled and penned that down in his mental record of things Anne said that were perfect to an almost torturous degree. “I couldn’t agree more,” he said.

* * *

When Mary went into labour and the Avonlea doctor refused to attend her, the dual family moved again as one in his stead. Matthew was dispatched to Charlottetown for Doctor Ward. Marilla and Anne provided warm water and towels, Anne singing as she went. Bash held Mary’s hand, and Gilbert combined his previous experience with what he’d read in books since then, and delivered the baby with very little difficulty. By the time Matthew arrived with the doctor, only congratulations were in order.

Anne, who was perfectly accustomed to her own tears flowing in moments of happiness, was nonetheless a little surprised to find Gilbert overcome in the hallway outside Mary’s room. “Have you been chopping onions, Gil?” she asked lightly, stationing herself at his elbow.

He smiled and applied his sleeve to his face. “Something like that.”

“Bash said you were brilliant in there.”

He chuckled, damply. “That’s not much of a compliment. Bash can’t describe anything with an adjective other than ‘brilliant’ right now.”

“True enough,” remarked Anne. Bash’s joy was absolute – and loud – and rather repetitive.

“Don’t mind me,” Gilbert said. “It’s the pressure, I think: I was so convinced I was going to do something wrong, and I didn’t, and now it’s over and I’m about as happy as I’ve ever been, but I think my eyes are struggling to catch up.”

“That’s alright,” said Anne, “I’m only not crying myself because I’ve dried out. I’ve never seen a baby more beautiful. To think she’s here and safe and...” She sniffled suddenly, “Oh, I was wrong! Here I go again.”

“They do say you ought to whet a baby’s head,” said Gilbert, as they leaned there against the wall, side by side. “Though I think it involves alcohol, not onions.”

Anne wrinkled her nose, remembering a certain misadventure with Diana. “I’ll stick to onions.”

Gilbert concurred; then she heard him say something ever so quietly afterwards, and though she didn’t quite catch it, she thought she heard the words ‘greater unity’, and smiled. 

* * *

  
  


“Chopping onions, Anne?”

Delphine was twelve weeks old, bonny and bright-eyed, and nestled in Anne’s lap when Gilbert came across the pair on the porch of Green Gables, his step quickened by the sounds of sobs that weren’t from an infant.

Anne looked up at him, and his heart turned over in his chest. “If only,” she said, trying valiantly to smile.

“Then... what’s wrong?” He came and sat with her on the longseat, stretching out a finger for Dellie to grab hold of.

“Oh, I’m just being silly,” said Anne. “I was just telling Delphine how grown-up she’s looking. Three months old.”

She imbued those last words with extra meaning, and Gilbert consulted his list. With a pang he realised he might know exactly what she meant.

“Three months,” he echoed. “Was that...”

“The age I was, or so I’ve always been told,” Anne continued, “when I was placed in the orphanage. That’s all I know. My parents’ names, and... and that I was Dellie’s age.”

Gilbert nodded soberly. Delphine clamped his finger in a tight grip and pulled it towards her mouth, forcing him to lean a little closer toward Anne.

“Delphine would like to offer you my shoulder to cry on,” he quipped, not caring that he sounded ‘gentle’.

Anne chuckled. “Thank you, Dellie.”

She didn’t move at first, but when it became clear that the baby had taken ownership of Gilbert’s finger and wouldn’t be surrendering it anytime soon, Anne did lean very softly against his shoulder and sighed.

Finger or no finger, Gilbert found himself wishing never to move from that spot as long as he lived.   
  


* * *

As they watched the Cuthberts’ carriage pull away from the house and Bash barricading himself inside, Anne needed no precursor about onions; she had no interest in watching Gilbert fall any further apart than he already had.

They held one another closer than close, under the bare-boughed trees that lined the walk to the Blythe-Lacroix house, and she found that she could not have spoken even if she wanted to. Mary lived still, but the promise of her loss had already begun its work: carving into them, deep and stark and painful. It hollowed out the place where words were kept.

Upon their parting, and after Gilbert’s silent nod – ‘yes’ to what, Anne wasn’t sure, but she felt it too, a stirring of resolve – they walked together to the house, gloved hands not reaching for one another. There was a barrier there, a line between friendly consolation and something else, and neither was going to cross it. 

Mary died in Bash’s arms on the morning of April 6th. Anne and Marilla arrived at midday, and saw Gilbert leaning disconsolately against a porch post, staring out, his gaze facing them but not really seeing.

“Oh,” said Anne, in a shuddering breath.

Marilla set her mouth in a firm line. “We’ll see if we can be any use,” she said quietly. 

Another wordless nod from Gilbert told them all they needed to know when they drew up. Marilla, less halting since Delphine’s arrival in her displays of affection, brought her arms around both Anne and Gilbert, and they stood for a long moment, bolstering one another. The more strength they had to share with Bash, the better.

Marilla released them, and went inside to see what she could do for the baby.

“It was peaceful, in the end,” said Gilbert, his voice thin and muted. “I suppose that’s...”

He trailed off, but Anne heard the words. _The best we could have asked for._ Yes, she thought bitterly, how nice, that Mary could slip from the world, and from their family, in tranquility. What a thing to have to be grateful for.

* * *

Gilbert watched Anne place the tight bouquet of blossoms on Mary’s grave, and let Jocelyn take his place at Bash’s side as the gathering moved towards the house for the wake.

“Sorry,” Anne said, when she eventually stood up and saw him waiting there. “Did you want to be alone?” She gestured vaguely to the ground.

“No,” he said, not too hurriedly. “I was waiting... for you.”

“Oh.”

Anne sniffed and joined him. “Just a few onions,” she murmured. “I keep thinking I’ve run out.”

“Same here.” Gilbert sighed. “It’s almost time to plant them. Real onions, I mean. I remember when Doctor Ward said...” he swallowed, “He couldn’t give us a date, of course. But I remember thinking, it will be spring, we’ll be... sowing.”

Anne hummed. They set off at a slow walk behind the rest of the group. “There ought to be a verse of poetry to be had there,” she reflected, “Mary being sown in the ground, part of... some kind of cycle. It only feels like an end.”

“Because it is,” he said. “Nothing grows today.”

“No,” Anne agreed. “Not even a poem. That’s all I meant – it ought to be poetic, but it isn’t.”

“I know what you meant,” he said.

Once inside the house, she joined Diana and Mrs Lynde, and Gilbert faded to the other side of the room, letting the dulled conversations drown out his thoughts.

* * *

  
  


Things were less strained for a while after that, as spring crept into summer. The days grew longer and more bearable, less heavy with grief. Light, even, and sometimes filled with a gleam of... potential. 

Unfortunately, potential was a thoroughly confusing subject when it came to Gilbert, Anne found in the days and weeks following the dance practice. She found herself second-guessing everything she said or did in his presence – which was difficult to do, given that she was impetuous, and he, though she’d never found cause to begrudge it before, was incapable of knocking.

And so, when he found her crying in the kitchen of Green Gables, it wasn’t entirely his fault that she fled. His innocent inquiry, “Have you been chopping onions?” brought back far too many memories of familial exchanges from a time before the white sergeant had dashed across her life, and suddenly she couldn’t bear for him to see her like this – bleary-eyed and blotchy and not at all like the heroine of whatever novel he’d sprung from. No ‘greater unity’ there - she’d never felt less his equal.

Thankfully, he didn’t seem quite as set on onions as his vegetable of choice that day, flicking his attention quickly to the comically enormous radish that had just entered the house, with Matthew in tow.

Anne was thankful for the interruption. “Gilbert needs cufflinks!” she snivelled, leaving him to Matthew and the radish and running for refuge. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t have an ‘onions’ conversation right now – things had changed too much, in her head and heart if not in fact.

Safe in her room, she washed her face and crossed to the window, intending only to sit and gaze pensively out, not to watch him leave. And certainly not to be _noticed_ watching him leave... oh, it was too much, she thought as she lowered her hand from the awkward wave of farewell.She would have to go and see Diana.  
  
Diana always said the perfect thing - and it was never about onions.


	2. An Alternate Cutting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An alternative take on the scene from 3x6. Matthew and his radish stay away from the kitchen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for **happy_go_fluffy** , who was dreaming in the comment section about a version of the last onion cutting (the one from the show) in which Gilbert and Anne don't get interrupted by Matthew and/or his radish, and instead talk about why she's crying. That set me to dreaming too, and so now I give you... This. 
> 
> It is self-indulgent and probably not terribly in keeping with Gilbert's season trajectory. But to this I say: who cares!
> 
> I was overwhelmed by the amount of lovely comments on the first set of onion cuttings, though, and there will be more of them following the same pattern. That's next chapter. I couldn't resist slipping this in first.
> 
> (also, like a dolt, I wrote this before properly looking at what Gilbert's wearing in the scene, so please just imagine he's as I describe)

Things were less strained for a while after the funeral, as spring crept into summer. The days grew longer and more bearable, less heavy with grief. Light, even, and sometimes filled with a gleam of... potential.

Unfortunately, potential was a thoroughly confusing subject when it came to Gilbert, Anne found in the days and weeks following the dance practice. She found herself second-guessing everything she said or did in his presence – which was difficult to do, given that she was impetuous, and he, though she’d never found cause to begrudge it before, was incapable of knocking.

And so, when he found her crying in the kitchen of Green Gables, it wasn’t entirely his fault that her first instinct was to flee. His innocent inquiry, “Have you been chopping onions?” brought back far too many memories of familial exchanges from a time before the white sergeant had dashed across her life, and suddenly she couldn’t bear for him to see her like this – bleary-eyed and blotchy and not at all like the heroine of whatever novel he’d sprung from. No ‘greater unity’ there - she’d never felt less his equal.

"I... um, Matthew?" Anne said, ignoring the question and grasping instead for his opening statement. "I'm– I'm sure he's around somewhere. Call for Jerry, he'll know."

She turned away, vowing to make a dash for her bedroom as soon as she heard him leave. Of course he'd turn up at the worst moment - wasn't he always doing that - as if her awful cold weren't enough he'd caught her crying over —

Mary's cake. _Mary_. Fresh tears sprang to her eyes, and she stifled a sob. The worst thing about it was the hint of selfishness she detected in her sorrow. Diana was her closest confidante, and would have to be told about her confusing feelings from the dance at some point. And Diana would try her best to decipher them, to offer words of advice - but Mary... Mary _knew_ Gilbert, understood Gilbert in a way he had often described as sisterly but which, Anne suspected, was closer to the maternal bond he'd never known with his own mother. Either way - whichever blood tie it resembled most closely, Mary would have helped her make peace with these new feelings about Gilbert, Anne was sure. And so she cried, not just for Mary and Bash and Delphine and her beautiful cake but for herself, for little old Anne, for friendship lost and confidence unuttered and a dense, dark ocean of doubt.

"Anne," came a quiet voice, and with a terrible jolt of awareness Anne realised that she'd been so wrapped up in her thoughts, she'd not remembered to wait for him to leave.

And he hadn't.

"It's nothing, Gilbert," she managed. "I'm feeling a little under the weather, that's all."

"Anne," he said again, "Don't... Don't do this." After a pause, he added, " _We_ don't do this."

Wistfully, she realised that he was right - that they didn't do this, didn't hide - were no strangers by now to one another's tears.

But that was _before_. Back when they were just Gilbert and Anne, not Mr Darcy and Miss Bennett. Rationally, of course, she knew that heroes and heroines did cry - must cry, especially in front of their counterparts - but she was not feeling awfully rational just then. She felt full of sorrow and confusion and (most of all) a cold.

"Just go, Gilbert, please," she said. Mercifully, a sneeze visited her at the perfect moment, and thus she was able to add, quite honestly, "I don't want to give you my cold."

He was quiet while she blew her nose on a handkerchief. "If that was all you had to give, I'd gladly go," he said then. "Although, it would be remiss of me not to at least bring you some soup."

She hated how clearly she could hear his hopeful smile in the words, even with her back turned. _Give it up_ , she implored him silently.

"But this isn't just a cold," he continued, as if somehow he'd managed not to hear her very loud thoughts. "I'm sorry, Anne: I usually try to comply with your wishes, if only for the sake of my right ear, but... I _can't_ leave you like this."

Instinct told her to run. She didn't need to wait for him to leave. She was free to move about her own house wherever she pleased.

"Won't you even look at me?"

Another voice - the one she had long since attributed to her heart - told her to stay. To give in; to accept his concern. Perhaps to see what, if anything, lay behind it. And apparently, her feet were listening to her heart, because instead of turning and heading for the stairs, she found herself turning and facing him.

"There you are," he said, on a breath that sounded relieved. Anne frowned, despite her state. What had he expected to see?

"Here I am," she acknowledged, wishing her voice could sound a little less tremulous. "And, as you can see, I'm fine."

A traitorous teardrop welled over to prove her a liar - she felt it slide down her cheek, but before it reached her chin, she found herself, without a word of warning, wrapped in Gilbert's arms.

With a faint and far-away horror, she found that the surprise of it had brought forth another wave of tears. _Wonderful_. Now she was snivelling all over his pristine white shirt, a shirt that needed cufflinks, no less: he was going to have to change before the fair and it would be her fault, only it wouldn't, really, because it was he who had embraced her, after she'd told him quite firmly that she didn't need his comfort...

Underneath all her fluttering thoughts, something deep and sound came to rest. She was here. He was here. By the time she became aware that her arms had moved of their own accord to return the hug, her breathing had evened out, just a little.

"What's brought this on?" he asked, and she felt the movement of his lips against the side of her head.

Anne drew in her breath, forced it to come though it shuddered and shook still, and pulled just a little away from him. Following her lead, he let her go, but neither stepped away from the other. She used those fleeting seconds to deliberate. She certainly couldn't tell him that her mess of a self was partly due to the dance practice, but she could at least part with the reason she had been crying in the first place. It was a shared one, after all.

"I was just... thinking about Mary," she said. She sniffed and looked down at the cake, sitting in all its perfection on the cooling rack.

Evidently, he followed her gaze. "This is her recipe?"

Anne nodded. "It's never come out so well before. I know it's stupid—"

"It's not," he said, quickly. "It's really not."

Their eyes met. Gilbert's mouth folded in slightly at one side, the saddest of smiles.

"It's the little things, right? The nice things she'd have loved, and... the less nice things she'd have made seem better." 

While speaking, he had moved his arm slowly so that it looped round her back. Anne, lost in his words, didn't think about what she was doing fast enough to stop her head falling against his shoulder.

"And just...talking to her. About anything. Even when she didn't know the answers, she somehow left me less... confused. I miss that most of all."

This ran such a close parallel to Anne's own recent thoughts that a tiny, tiny part of her dared to wonder if he was confused about the same thing that was plaguing her. But how could she possibly ask that? It hardly seemed likely, and it didn't fit here, anyway: this moment was Mary's.

So Anne said, "Me too," and left it at that.

After a few moments, she took a deep breath, scrunched her hands to fists and used them to scrub her face dry. She stood upright, pulling away from him again.

"Time's getting on," she said, feeling how jarring it was but unable to come up with another way of moving from this place: this place they had arrived in that was far too warm, and perilously comfortable. "There's so much to do before the fair." She looked up at him, biting her lip.

"What?" he asked.

"I've ruined your shirt."

"You– oh," he looked down. Perhaps if the shirt hadn't been quite so white to begin with, he could have gotten away with it. "Don't worry about that. Saves me getting some cufflinks."

"That was the entire reason you came," she lamented.

"Well, look at it like this: I came here to rid myself of a need for cufflinks, and I've succeeded."

Anne chuckled, and immediately sneezed. "You really are going to get this cold," she said. "Which, you know, is more or less entirely your fault."

He smiled. She tried not to look at it directly. It was too similar to the one she'd last seen while they were dancing.

"I take all the blame," he agreed. "Thoughtless of me."

She reflected on how wrong and how right that was: how the opposite of thoughtless was thoughtful, which he undoubtedly was; but how he'd embraced her as if on impulse alone – thoughtless indeed. Just as she had been the day he'd had to deliver Mary her prognosis. It was as if—

She stopped reflecting abruptly. That was quite enough of that.

"I should... change," he said, and for a moment he sounded so philosophical that it took Anne a second to realise he was still talking about his shirt. "I'll see you at the fair?"

"Yes. Follow the admiring gasps from the cake table."

He grinned. "And you're sure you didn't put any onions in there?"

Her laughter followed him to the door. 


End file.
